Since its inception in 2000, the Heartland Center for Occupational Health and Safety has served as a resource for Federal Region VII and the US, providing interdisciplinary graduate, postgraduate, and residency training for practitioners and researchers in occupational health and safety (OHS) professions. The major rationale for the Center is to address dual problems in Federal Region VII-higher than US average rates of occupational disease and injury and shortages of trained OHS professionals. The Center has grown to 7 graduate level training programs, including occupational health nursing, occupational medicine, industrial hygiene, ergonomics, agricultural health and safety, occupational injury prevention, and occupational epidemiology. The Center's active continuing education and outreach programs reach hundreds of practioners in the Region, utilizing traditional and innovative distance-education technology. This proposal is for continued funding of the Center for the next five years. The projected annual number of trainees in each program area are the following: Industrial Hygiene 15 (10 master's, 5 doctoral); Occupational Medicine Residency 6; Occupational Health Nursing 15 (13 master's, 2 doctoral); Ergonomics 8 (3 master's, 5 doctoral); Occupational Injury Prevention 8 (6 doctoral, 2 integrative); Occupational Epidemiology 9 (5 master's, 4 doctoral); Agricultural Safety and Health 10 (7 master's, 3 doctoral); Continuing Education 1574. Objective: The training provided by the Heartland Center for Occupational Health and Safety will increase the number of trained occupational health and safety professionals in Federal Region VII (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri) and strengthens the capabilities of occupational health and safety professionals to reduce the high rates of occupational disease and injury in this region. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]